ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors assume the reader to be somewhat familiar with plane kinematics of a rigid body. The velocity and acceleration analysis of a rigid body, useful in Newtonian (Eulerian) dynamics, is normally covered in any preliminary course on dynamics. The authors briefly recapitulate the velocity and acceleration relationships between points on a rigid body. In mechanisms, very often a point of a rigid body is guided along a path prescribed in another moving rigid body. The kinematic analysis in such situations is facilitated by considering the motion relationships between two instantaneously coincident points belonging to these two rigid bodies. The instantaneous center of velocity of a moving rigid body is, as the name implies, applicable at an instant, i.e., for a given position or configuration of the moving body. As the rigid body moves, the locus of the instantaneous center on the fixed reference plane is termed the fixed centrode.
